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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hella_Tellah" data-source="post: 4125869" data-attributes="member: 52669">If the PCs are hired to map out a ruin in Xen'Drik on their own, then they're either competent enough to map out the ruin, or they'll need some sort of mook to come with them to help them map it out.  In 3.5, you might require that the PCs have ranks in Profession: Cartographer or they have to defend a defenseless academic as they wander through a hostile environment.  Thing is, though, that the DM should (ideally) know whether his PCs have ranks in Profession: Cartographer or not.  If they do, then he designs an adventure around that, allowing them to use that skill, and if they don't, he has a defenseless mook that follows them and requires protection, or he makes the adventure revolve around some other skills the PCs have.  It was still an act of DM fiat, though, and it always will be as long as DMs are still designing their own adventures.Now, for my games, I don't give a tojanida's tentacle about the DC required to map out a cavern, or navigate by the stars, or what have you.  If the story is better, the game more fun, when the PC succeeds at something, the PC succeeds.  If there ought to be an element of chance--if there's some doubt that the PC could reasonably achieve the action, or if the story will be fun and exciting whether he fails or succeeds--then the player rolls to see if his character can do it.  There's already a versatile system of ability checks in place to allow PCs to do things that aren't explicitly on their character sheets.  I use it.  Map stuff with an Intelligence check.  Design a pulley system with an Intelligence check, and build it with Dexterity.  Find your way around the ocean with a Wisdom check.  There's a system already there, and for my games, I don't need more.  Maybe you do.And that's fine.  But I don't think we need the core rulebooks bogged down with DCs and skills for a whole host of activities that won't come up in 90% of games being played; we need a set of core rules designed to do what D&D does best, without flipping through page after page of Random Harlot Encounter Tables and Weather Effects by Climate and Biome.  If your games require a core rulebook that's much heavier on subsystems for a wider array of activities, maybe D&D 4th Edition isn't for you.  White Wolf's Storytelling system is very flexible, although an awful lot less simulationist than D&D 3.5.  Gurps has rules for anything and everything.  The core of D&D, though, should be a streamlined system for adventuring in a fantasy environment.  Everything else belongs in a supplement, or in another game entirely.</blockquote>

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